All That's Left
by FeathersMcStrange
Summary: Beverly Katz was murdered by Hannibal Lecter. Beverly Katz walked into work the Monday after she died. Beverly Katz wasn't dead. She wouldn't say she was exactly alive, either. Something happened to her, and nobody knew what. She did know one thing, though. Hannibal Lecter was responsible.


Uploading some fics which somehow managed to not get posted here.

A birthday gift I put together for my friend Swan, ft. Beverly Katz who is not dead thank you very much, but might be a bit. Undead. So to speak.

* * *

 _You're gone, gone, gone away_  
 _I watched you disappear_  
 _All that's left is the ghost of you._

 _\- Little Talks, Of Monsters And Men_

Nothing is the same in the days following. People wander the halls of the office with dazed faces and speak in quiet voices. Like they are standing in a graveyard, trying not to wake the dead. Nobody knows what to say to Jimmy Price or Brian Zeller so no one says anything at all. Nobody says anything to Will Graham either. The words aren't there. The shock, the horror, the grief, that is all there. The words have vanished.

And then Beverly Katz walks in Monday morning just like she has every Monday morning since it all began. When he rounds the corner and sees her there, Jimmy's coffee mug shatters on the hard floor, ceramic shards fallen in a heap like the pieces of the silence that had broken along with it. Sand slides past the hourglass while the building and its occupants hang suspended in a moment of bewildered shock and stunned disbelief.

She looks just as she did when she left for the last time, except there is something different about her, something that lingers in every step she takes. It feels ancient and dark and not to be trifled with. Nobody in this building has ever been afraid of Beverly before.

Then again, nobody in this building has ever seen someone come back from the dead before either.

"Hi."

It is only when she speaks that it becomes real, and suddenly everybody is moving. About four different people are running to find Jack Crawford. Jimmy and Brian can't seem to decide who gets to hug her first, so she ends up with one hand clenched in the back of two different jackets, breath choked in her throat as she closes her eyes and buries her face half in one shoulder half in the other.

They say nothing, but they can both feel the freezing temperature. She is ice cold.

In the hours that follow, Beverly is confronted with more questions than she has ever heard in quick succession in her life, none of which she knows the answer to.

'No, I don't know whose body is in the morgue.'

'No, it isn't me.'

'No, to my knowledge I don't have an identical twin.'

'No, I don't know what happened.'

'No, I don't know how it happened.'

There is only one piece of the puzzle she can slot into place, a truth she feels like screaming from a clock tower, broadcasting to anybody within a hundred miles to be careful, to watch out. The devil walks among them not in sheep's clothing, but in expensive suits. He hosts dinner parties and smiles like a predator.

"Hannibal Lecter. It was Hannibal Lecter."

"What?"

"Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper."

"How do you know?"

As if anyone needs any evidence aside from her own murder.

She stares at Jack and her chest convulses, inhale and exhale getting mixed up, producing nothing but a strangled choke. When she runs they do not follow her. Her flee from questions she has no answers to - the reason she became a scientist in the first place - leads her down into the familiar cool air of the lab. She knows Jimmy and Brian are waiting for her there, and instead of trying to sort through her thoughts, Beverly instead walks past everyone who tries to speak to her or stop her.

Beverly finds what she's looking for in the quiet of the morgue, still air disturbed by nothing but the faint hum of the freezers. She hasn't been able to bring herself to look at the body yet, the one everyone was so sure was hers. She doesn't know how that is possible.

She doesn't know how any of this is possible.

She needs to talk to Will.

But that can wait, because right now what she needs the most is time. Time to find her footing, time to figure out where she stands. Time to sort through the eldritch swirl of memories she is not sure are entirely hers, to tune out the whispers sliding through the walls, breathy sighs nobody else can hear. Beverly hardly reacts when Jimmy and Brian enter the room, sitting quietly on either side of her. Her perception of the world has been distorted, twisted beyond recognition. It is like she is at once oblivious and hyper aware of everything going on around her.

Somewhere in her mind she acknowledges that she should be wishing for a thicker jacket right about now, as she always did standing in the chilled atmosphere of autopsy. Just one more thing to add to the list of things that are wrong right now. Everything feels wrong.

Something happened to her last night.

"Something happened to me." Her voice is an odd sort of hollow, with a razor's edge to it. They keep quiet, say nothing. It is her time to speak, to give a voice to the things she cannot for the life - or death - of her fathom an answer to. The metal of the wall is cold behind their backs. She can't feel it. Everything is cold to her. "I went somewhere. And then I got yanked back. And it hurt. It felt like every atom of my body was split apart and then welded back together again, but something happened, and it ended up wrong."

Beverly's hands are clenched at her sides, flexing and clenching rhythmically. "It feels wrong. Something's wrong." One clench too tight, nails digging into her palms, and there is a loud pop down the hall, sparks cascading down like a glittering, extraterrestrial CGI waterfall to the soundtrack of tinkling broken glass.

Biting back the shocked curse that nearly springs from his throat, Brian looks at her. His mouth feels dry and every word he tries to grasp at flees from him. Eventually he comes up with the only excuse for an inquiry he can muster. "Are you okay?"

"I need to know who did this to me." She doesn't answer the question, perhaps because she does not have an answer. Beverly is a frightening kind of steady, eyes locked on the light that had broken moments before. "I need to find out what happened to me and why."

"What can we do?"

Now she looks back at him, feels the offer from either side of her. 'Whatever you need. Whatever it takes.'

"Help me take down Hannibal Lecter."

There is a bitter flavor on Beverly's tongue.

It tastes like the promise of revenge.


End file.
